1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for improving image quality and in particular to an apparatus and method for converting binary images to grey-scale or color images and displaying those images.
2. Background of the Related Art
It has been known that when a person views a rapidly cycled through sequence of binary images, the person may, if the rate and duration of images is proper, temporally integrate such that that sequence of binary images and the sequence in turn appears to be grey-scale images. This integration phenomenon is of particular interest with the arrival of high speed binary displays. Such devices are used, for example, in projection display systems, head-up displays and head mounted displays. There exist small fast high resolution displays which are essentially binary in nature such as the Digital Mirror Device (DMD), made by Texas Instruments, as well as actively addressed ferroelectric liquid crystal devices. These technologies are both capable of producing many thousands of binary images per second, depending on the number of pixels per frame, etc. . . . .
FIG. 1A shows a series of binary images 105 which could be viewed by a person in the manner described above. Each frame F1-Fm will be comprised of a series of bits that are either 1 (ON) or 0 (OFF). That is, the series F1-Fm of frames as well as each individual frame is actually a series of bits which must eventually be displayed in order to make it possible for the person viewing the binary images to perform the integration discussed above. FIG. 1A further shows pixels Pj in general, and P1-P4, in particular, as representative pixels. As each frame F1-Fm is displayed for a time t, some of the pixels Pj will be a logical 1 and some will be a logical 0. In order for a person to view images produced by frames F1-Fm, a display device is required.
A problem with the above approach is that a display device which displays the group of binary images 105 must be capable of responding in the time t (which relates to the frame rate 1/t). This places a limitation on which displays can be used. Namely, only those display devices can be used which have response rates at least as great as 1/t Hz or frames per second. However, the integration process requires that t be small, otherwise the display would appear to flicker and not appear to provide a grey-scale.
Currently, there are a variety of display devices which might be used to output the above discussed subframes. Liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) devices which have been designed as displays (or spatial light modulators) have used pixel designs which can be categorized as being either "dynamic" or "static". A static pixel design has a memory element at each pixel, which can store the pixel data indefinitely without the need for periodic refresh cycles. This is analogous to SRAM (static random access memory) in computer memory. A dynamic pixel stores data capacitively and requires a periodic refresh to compensate for leakage of the stored charge, analogous to DRAM (dynamic random access memory).
Both of these types of displays share the property that as the array of pixels is addressed in sequence, row-at-a-time, the liquid crystal begins to update to the new data immediately once the row is addressed. It happens that a reasonably high resolution displays, such as 1024 by 1024 pixels, the electronic refresh time is comparable or longer than the liquid crystal switching time. For example, if data is supplied to the display through 32 data wires running at 50M bits/sec, such an array of pixels takes approximately 690 microseconds to update. The liquid crystal switches in approximately 100 microseconds. It is valid, therefore, to view the display as being updated in a sweeping motion across its area.
Some applications require that the data on all of the display be simultaneously valid before it can be usefully viewed. Examples of such applications include most coherent applications such as optical correlators, optical beam steerers etc. . . . , and display applications where precise synchronization with other parts of the system, such as an illuminated source, is required.